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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Sample Summary

Students, below is another example of the kind of summary desired from you, as discussed here.
Robyn Malo's "Penitential Discourse in Hoccleve's Series" appears in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 34 (2012: 277-305). The article's central claim is that Thomas Hoccleve's Series uses the rhetoric of imprisonment to portray the narrator as both sane and without sin; Malo also asserts that the penal figuration serves as a unifying principle of the work. Significant critical commentary is invoked to bolster the argument, both directly and as a point of refutation against which to push. Malo also deploys comparative quotations from Hoccleve and his contemporaries to highlight the differences in their discourses. In Malo's reading, Hoccleve's work becomes a means of self-investigation--unusually for the penitential mode in which much of the Series functions. It is an intriguing reading of an author usually considered minor.